How Tree Planting can help reverse Climate Change

Planting enough trees could be the most effective way to successfully overcome climate change, and it’s something we can easily do now by each of us helping to plant A Tree a Day.

Too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere holds the sun’s heat in like a blanket, causing serious changes in global temperatures, which in turn causes extreme weather patterns and ultimately the rising of the oceans. Trees take this carbon dioxide out of the air as they grow, storing it as wood while also helping to store more carbon in the soil below them. Planting enough trees can restore balance to our atmosphere by converting the excess carbon dioxide into healthy ecosystems and into thousands of useful resources that people need.

While trees ability to remove carbon dioxide and restore balance to our atmosphere is simply amazing, here are 4 additional ways that trees help keep the planet cool.

1. Trees Create Clouds that Help Cool the Earth
The clouds that are created by trees and forests play a huge role in keeping the earth cool by reflecting the sun’s heat back into space before it reaches the earth. It’s estimated that if we could increase the world’s cloud cover by just 3% through tree planting, so much less of the sun’s heat would reach the earth, that these extra clouds alone could cool the earth enough to counteract climate change.

2. Forests Keep the Ground Cool
Forests mighty canopies shade the ground and waters beneath them. This keeps the earth cooler and protects the living soil, which would otherwise dry out and become lifeless. This is very important as living soil can store an incredible amount of carbon, keeping climate change causing carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere. When soil becomes too hot and dry, the carbon molecules in the soil re-bond with oxygen and release carbon dioxide back into the air. But even areas that have become desert-like can be restored by simply planting enough trees. Large-scale reforestation can help store so much carbon back in the soil that it has the potential to remove all of the excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, allowing the earth’s climate to come back into balance.

3. Trees Cool the Atmosphere by Cleaning It
Around cities and industrial zones, air pollution molecules combine with water vapor, hovering in what’s called a “humid haze”, trapping in more of the sun’s heat. As we explain in (our video) “How Trees Help Create the Fresh Water Supply”, many trees breathe out both water vapor and friendly bacteria that assist in the formation of clouds. These bacteria trigger the water vapor and air pollution molecules to cluster into droplets that then fall to the ground. This removes these hazes from of our skies, allowing the sun’s heat to exit again and the earth to cool.

4. Trees Convert the Sun’s Energy into Life
Since sunlight powers photosynthesis, the sun’s heat is literally used up as the leaves and needles do their job, converting carbon dioxide and water into the building blocks of plant matter while creating oxygen. This plant matter becomes food for animals, and the energy travels up the food chain. So, the miracle of photosynthesis both protects the earth from overheating, and provides the basis for all life on the planet.

Planting Trees is a Huge Part of the Solution to Climate Change
Knowing that trees maintain our atmosphere, keep the earth cool by shading it with clouds and canopies, regulate much of the planet’s fresh water cycle, and create the building blocks of all life, we simply have to be in awe at the amazing service that trees provide us. We can also understand that further decline of our world’s forests is not a direction we can afford to go in.

At the A Tree a Day campaign, we see large-scale tree planting as being the world’s most affordable, practical, and multi-benefit opportunity to effectively counteract climate change. That’s why we are asking you, and everyone you know, to take two simple steps towards making this a reality. First, fund the planting of a tree, every day of the year, for just $3 a month – that’s just 10 cents a tree. Next, take the ‘30 Day Tree Challenge’ and inspire two of your friends to do the same within 30 days. This creates a domino effect of participation that has the potential to reach over 300 million people in the next 3 years. This is enough people helping to plant trees to restore balance to our atmosphere, effectively reversing climate change, while transforming the degraded lands of the earth back into healthy ecosystems.

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